Frances Mayes > Quotes

“Life offers you a thousand chances... all you have to do is take one.”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy

“Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere; I would be different.”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy

“Where you are is who you are. The further inside you the place moves, the more your identity is intertwined with it. Never casual, the choice of place is the choice of something you crave.”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy

“There is no technique, there is just the way to do it.
Now, are we going to measure or are we going to cook?”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy

“I had the urge to examine my life in another culture and move beyond what I knew.”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy

“A Chinese poet many centuries ago noticed that to re-create something in words is like being alive twice.”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy

“Splendid to arrive alone in a foreign country and feel the assault of difference. Here they are all along, busy with living; they don't talk or look like me. The rhythm of their day is entirely different; I am foreign. ”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy

“Do you know the most surprising thing about divorce? It doesn't actually kill you. Like a bullet to the heart or a head-on car wreck. It should. When someone you've promised to cherish till death do you part says "I never loved you," it should kill you instantly. You shouldn't have to wake up day after day after that, trying to understand how in the world you didn't know. The light just never went on, you know. I must have known, of course, but I was too scared to see the truth. Then fear just makes you so stupid.”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy

“The world cracks open for those willing to take a risk.”
― Frances Mayes, A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller

“Five tender apricots in a blue bowl, a brief and exact promise of things to come.”
― Frances Mayes, In Tuscany

“Like fanning through a deck of cards, my mind flashes on the thousand chances, trivial to profound, that converged to re-create this place. Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere; I would be different. Where did the expression "a place in the sun" first come from? My rational thought process cling always to the idea of free will, random event; my blood, however, streams easily along a current of fate. ”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy

“One of those flash epiphanies of travel, the realization that worlds you'd love vibrantly exist outside your ignorance of them. The vitality of many lives you know nothing about. The breeze lifting a blue curtain in a doorway billows just the same whether you are lucky enough to observe it or not. Travel gives such jolts. I could live in this town, so how is it that I've never been here before today?”
― Frances Mayes, A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller

“Sometimes the valley below is like a bowl filled up with fog. I can see hard green figs on two trees and pears on a tree just below me. A fine crop coming in. May summer last a hundred years.”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy

“As travel pushes me forward, memory keeps dragging me backward.”
― Frances Mayes, A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller

“Everything I pick up seems to lure me away. Everything I do in my daily life begins to feel like striking wet matches. The need to travel is a mysterious force. A desire to 'go' runs through me equally with an intense desire to 'stay' at home. An equal and opposite thermodynamic principle. When I travel, I think of home and what it means. At home I'm dreaming of catching trains at night in the gray light of Old Europe, or pushing open shutters to see Florence awaken. The balance just slightly tips in the direction of the airport.”
― Frances Mayes, A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller

“All afternoon in the deck chair, I try to describe to my notebook the colors of the water and sky. How to translate sunlight into words?”
― Frances Mayes, A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller

“The Only Thing More Surprising Than the Chance She's Taking...Is Where It's Taking Her! ”
― Frances Mayes

“My idea of heaven still is to drive the gravel farm roads of Umbria and Tuscany, very pleasantly lost.”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun

“Whatever a guidebook says, wether or not you leave somewhere with a sense of the place is entirely a matter of smell and instinct.”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy

“We were given one country and we've set up in another.”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy

“Travel releases spontaneity. You become a godlike creature full or choice, free to visit the stately pleasure domes, make love in the morning, sketch a bell tower, read a history of Byzantium, stare for one hour at the face of Leonardo da Vinci's 'Madonna dei fusi.' You open, as in childhood, and--for a time--receive this world. There's visceral aspect, too--the huntress who is free. Free to go, free to return home bringing memories to lay on the hearth.”
― Frances Mayes, A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller

“Although I am a person who expected to be rooted in one spot forever, as it has turned out I love having the memories of living in many places.”
― Frances Mayes, Bringing Tuscany Home: Sensuous Style From the Heart of Italy

“There are reasons we congregate in these hot spots- to worship beauty and to feel its effects light up the electrolytes in the bloodstream.”
― Frances Mayes, A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller

“The queen bee's life is totally overrated. All she does is lay eggs, lay eggs. She takes one nuptial flight. That one stuns her with enough fertile power to be trapped in the hive forever. The workers—the sexually undeveloped females—have the best life. They have fields of flowers to roll in. Imagine turning over and over inside a rose.”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun

“Where is it written that houses must be beige? Any dun colored house would look better if painted pineapple, cream, ochre, or even a smart sage.”
― Frances Mayes

“When you travel you become invisible if you want. I do want. I like to be the observer. What makes these people who they are Could I feel at home here No one expects you to have the stack of papers back by Tuesday or to check messages or to fertilize the geraniums or to sit full of dread in the waiting room at the protologist’s office. When travelling you have the delectable possibility of not understanding a word of what is said to you. Language becomes simply a musical background for watching bicycles zoom along a canal calling for nothing from you. Even better if you speak the language you catch nuances and make more contact with people.

Travel releases spontaneity. You become a godlike creature full of choice free to visit the stately pleasure domes make love in the morning sketch a bell tower read a history of Byzantium stare for one hour at the face of Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna dei fusi. You open as in childhood and – for a time – receive this world. There’s the visceral aspect too – the huntress who is free. Free to go Free to return home bringing memories to lay on the hearth.”
― Frances Mayes, A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller

“The urge to travel feels magnetic. Two of my favorite words are linked: departure time. And travel whets the emotions, turns upside down the memory bank, and the golden coins scatter.”
― Frances Mayes

“At Bramasole, the first secret spot that draws me outside is a stump and board bench on a high terrace overlooking the lake and valley. Before I sit down, I must bang the board against a tree to knock off all the ants. Then I'm happy. With a stunted oak tree for shelter and a never-ending view, I am hidden. No one knows where I am. The nine-year-old's thrill of the hideout under the hydrangea comes back: My mother is calling me and I am not answering.”
― Frances Mayes, Bringing Tuscany Home: Sensuous Style From the Heart of Italy

“Italy's siren call lures us more and more.”
― Frances Mayes, A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller

“They all agree, Italy is not what it used to be. What is? All my adult life I've heard how Silicon Valley used to be all orchards, how Atlanta used to be genteel, how publishing used to be run by gentlemen, how houses used to cost what a car costs now. All true, but what can you do but live now?”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun